Intentionality is a Latin word meaning being guided towards a thing or goal. It is the ability of the mind to represent, to be about, properties, states of affairs and things or focused critical consciousness. It is one of Greene’s themes on intention for consciousness and the viewing of the world through multiple realities showing that existence precedes essence. The three basic types of intentionality are intentionality of vision, belief, and knowledge which are depicted in Greene’s reading. It is one of the assumptions of invitational theory, the human potential realization is best accomplished by programs, places, processes and policies designed to call development by people inviting themselves and others professionally. Invitation is an intentional action of offering for consideration something beneficial, enabling creation and maintenance of an environment to realize full human potential.
Greene painted a picture of educational institutions in trouble with teachers being subject to objectification and mystification, on intentionality of knowledge Greene recommends aesthetic education which affects student’s intellectual and emotional development. Greene explains that intentional actions that raise awareness and consciousness are connected to abilities such as seeing, hearing and attending, this is cognitive understanding. This helps students to find their ears and eyes and as well discover their voices.
Pursuit of freedom is a social responsibility that goes with the power of the possible; on intentionality of vision Greene refers to the necessity to transcend passivity by stating that passivity cannot be imposed or given, rather, it has to be chose. This suggests that ordinary life does not always involve praxis. Greene in the second chapter interspersed fiction characters like Hester Prynne, Ahab and Huckleberry Finn with historical personas like Whitman, Du Bois, and Jefferson. This gives him the chance to build a historical panorama of changing freedom concepts in America from the time of its foundation. She dedicates the third and fourth chapters to women struggles for freedom, Jews, African-American and other local groups. These chapters show how literary people have opposed the social or psychological conditioning or oppression and have instead transcended determinants in liberating their individual projects without giving a consideration of the people on the suffering end.
Artists displayed knowledge of freedom in the live of their fictional creations whereas philosophers and the public abstractly articulated it. Through the vision to achieve freedom and women rights, Green displays to us the passivity of vision. Youths in the Earth Conservation Corps assembled and decided to act in a concert to change their world; this shows the power of the possible where everyone can rise and act for a better tomorrow.
On intentionality of belief, Greene says educators have taken the actual as the reality losing their power to imagine the possible, “yet those of us committed to education are committed not only to affecting continuities but to preparing the ground for what is to come” (Greene, 3). Greene seeks attention of those who educate with untapped possibility in mind, this way of educating enables opening up the space evident between dialect of the possible and the actual, hence the need to know and call the possible to derive full potential.
Greene incorporates practitioners of invitational education as part of her audience teaching with untapped possibility; this helps students to open dialectical space between the actual and the possible by breaking obstacles of becoming due to negative self-images.
Works Cited
Greene, Maxine. The Dialectic of Freedom. New York: Teachers College Press, 1988. Print.
Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Continuum.
